


In vino vanitas

by Andingsky



Category: Cultist Simulator (Video Game)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-28
Updated: 2020-07-28
Packaged: 2021-03-05 20:20:32
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,265
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25571230
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Andingsky/pseuds/Andingsky
Summary: In a somewhat altered timeline, an exile who put an end to her tight escape met a ghoul without her Towers of the Dove in a mothy tavern. And they had a couple of peaceful talks.
Kudos: 4





	In vino vanitas

**Author's Note:**

  * A translation of [杯中仅余虚无](https://archiveofourown.org/works/25506901) by [Andingsky](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Andingsky/pseuds/Andingsky). 



> A clumsy first attempt of re-writing my work in English.  
> If there was any mistakes in grammar or facts about alcoholic drinks, please let me know.

“A former reckoner and a medium walked into a bar...”

As that tall woman clumsily passed by her table, Rue caught a familiar scent on her nose tip. Familiar, yet nothing nostalgic.  
Actually, “tall woman” might not be the right term to describe that person who was standing at about 6’ 3, with a skinny—almost skeletal—body wrapped in sports jacket and dark flannel pants, and half a face covered under the shadow of a duckbill cap. But Rue believed more than firmly that it would be a woman, just like she was as sure that the scent was honey.  
Honey. Stale. Mixed with water. On the brink of ferment. Gives you wooziness in the back of your head. The scent of Honey.  
Once in another life, a lively baker told her with solemnity and a smile, that was the scent of hunger. The woman called herself “Lou” paid little attention to the conclusion back then. Same person who goes as Rue believes that it has nothing to do with her right now, exactly like the mentioned life itself. Back then, a reckoner wore wounds that opens doors and men’s clothing held a withering heart in both hands, with which she caressed her own caul for countless times. Right now, the typist with stiff permed curls had few concerns on her mind other than calloused fingertips.  
The one-eyed barkeeper hurried around Rue’s table without a sound, placed a pint glass and a platter before that living skeleton of a woman：pickled eggs, herrings and onions. Feta cut lazily into dices. Porter ale black as char. Rue felt her stomach twisting into an icy knot. The duckbill cap laid on grimy table, showing black hair divided at the side and ghostly light blue around the eyes. Twig-like fingers unfolded rather untimely a copy of morning papers at dusk.  
Rue dusted the shoulders and sleeves of her cardigan subconsciously. Moth scales.  
Upon leaving this grizzly tavern, one has no choice but carrying grease on both elbows and dust form the Wood on their back. Despite her weekly visits, Rue never believed that this would be the appropriate place for her. Just like the appropriate things to be placed before that tall woman would be absinthe and carafe, rather than a thick beer glass.  
Just like the appropriate thing to do would never be picking up her brandy——faint as happy memories——and walk toward that table, yet she did it anyway. Blood rush plundered in her ears as Rue stood up, making noises of a tiny insect fluttering its wings.  
The taller woman looked up from her papers; or more precisely, she moved the newspaper downwards a few inches, since Rue was no taller than 5’2, it was pointless to look up. Her grey eyes were round and transparent, like glassy artificial eyes on taxidermies. Rue pulled a chair and sat across her table, she nodded aloofly, pushed the platter with some cheese left toward Rue, and went back to reading.  
A fruit fly landed on the vinegar-stained-ridge of the platter.  
The scent of honey. Hunger.  
Rue left he platter untouched.

·With the shop assistant’s eyes stuck on her back, Alaska closed the candy store’s door single-handed, while a bulging kraft paper bag rested awkwardly on the other : cinnamon drops so red that it was offensive; mixed chocolates in tacky decorated boxes; milk caramel melted together with wax paper wrappings; candied ginger and orange peels weighed over half a pound. That young woman behind the counter seemingly tried desperately to recall, whether she had read anything like “beware of child marauders!” on the local paper.  
Every single week, on her way to Montmerenzi-McDonald Gallery and back, Alaska would walk pass this candy store. Yet it was the first time for her to realize that candy stores may remain open even after closing time of the gallery. She had absolutely no cravings for sweets, though. The bitemarks on her arms would never lambent like scales of obsidian, but those honeyed memories——memories so alive as if they actually belonged to her once——laid still at the depth of her abdomen like a stone: heavy, swollen, and sweet.  
Shouldn’t have bought candies, thought Alaska. But what else can you do, anyway?  
It might as well be the scent to be blamed. The scent of flowers. The scent that haunted her nose all the way in that candy store.  
Shouldn’t have shared that with HER, thought Alaska. But what else can you do, anyway?  
The scent was of snow-colored star jasmines. What else can you do, anyway.  
There were few patrons in the tavern as usual. That petit woman with a slight hue of olive on her skin was leaning on the counter, busy explaining, and trying to avoid too much hand movements  
“Anis, my dear. It’s aniseed we are talking about, not wormwood...”  
The tavernkeeper with airy curls dragged out a bottle with its label torn off. Through her kraft paper package and duckbill cap now laid on the table, Alaska saw Rue approaching with both hands full: ice bucket, carafe, shot glasses.  
“Aslan sütü, or lion’s milk, for your liking.” Rue seemed more excited than she would be. Alaska even had to stop the glass from being push toward her. Clear water crushed the spirit and ice cubes into ivory.  
“My ma’s favorite, I’d make this for her all the time.” Said Rue.  
“Suppose my ma would like this, every time I make this, I’d think of her.” Heard Alaska.  
Alaska never inquired Rue anything not mentioned by herself, her family name, for instance. As the shorter woman never asked why Louisa R. would be widely known as “Alaska”.  
Yet she asked.  
“You were raised in a East Mediterranean family, I presume?”  
Shouldn’t have asked, thought Alaska. Blame it on the scent of star jasmine then. On the bitterness of her Porter ale, which would never blend with that frozen sweetness of a color in her stomach. On the itching of those tear wounds on her back, which sealed wings never unfurled barely under her shoulder blades.  
“Raised?” Rue choked, on the spirit, or on that term itself.  
“Raised, you say?”  
Them she cracked into laughter, as if what she just heard was a most vulgar joke.  
It was not the first time that Rue laughed like this before her. “What kind of medium carries flyers of their own shows around?” When Alaska handed her a flyer that happened to be in her jacket pocket, she crackled with her voice sharp as copper. “Please tell me that you would wear those onion-like head garments. Or do I have the luck to finally see you in a dress?” An oval face with faint olive hue would be seen occasionally in the audience since then. With an expression of “Bah there’s no fun in THAT” toward her stage tuxedo.  
Laughter would never evoke uneasiness in Alaska, but it kindled tiny insect-like sparks in her abdomen. Reminded her of the tea Sulochana served her during their last appointment, spiced with drops of Whiskey and rumors from some map’s edge back on the Continent.  
Alaska moved her hands toward the ice bucket. Rue waved her down, rubbing the corners of her eyes.  
“Since it was you who started this,” Rue filled the bottom of a glass with spirit,” what raised you then?”  
“A clergy man, decent and godly.”  
Alaska heard a voice that almost never belonged to her.  
Rue shrugged. Passed a glass of ivory with ice cubes floating in it, and lifted her own shot from a tiny puddle on the grimy table. The colors in her eyes reminded Alaska’s tongue of some fine bone power, swallowed with water, with the taste of warm yet haunting sands.  
“Here’s to the daughters we stole; I suppose.” Said Rue.  
The unimpeachable darkness of honeyed sweet in her stomach broke into pieces by the rush of ivory. But Alaska left all the sweets she bought to Rue anyway.

·The wooden table glinted dimly with grease and dust. Rue would see herself nowhere too close, so she leant across with only the end of her palms touching the table. Her eyesight kept fading along the years, though it was impossible for Rue to admit this, so the blame could only fall on the tiny prints of that morning paper.  
“Typhus outbreak...” The paper wiggled between Alaska’s fingers. Thankfully, she had always been a slow reader. Too slow actually, that Rue almost believed those advertisements and obituaries were in fact rather intriguing.  
“German aristocrat...volunteering in a hospital, treating victims...claimed by the disease...”  
Rue didn’t read it aloud, but felt as uneasy as if she did.  
It was him. Clicking sounds of heels attached to fine boots. Reflections of a complicated countenance on crystal spectacles. Teachings written on the skin. Lohengrin in the Staatsoper. No need to squint for the name. It had to be him.  
Lohengrin, Lohengrin with illuminated yet blurred face under her sleepy eyes. What was he singing back then?  
„Des Ritters drum sollt Zweifel ihr nicht hegen, Erkennt ihr ihn ——“  
Rue remembered only, that she had always been embarrassed of her German.  
„Dann muss er von Euch ziehen.“  
Folding sounds of newspaper stopped the singing voice of a marble horn tangling in Rue’s head. Right on the moment for her to suspect whether bodhráns were included in the original orchestral arrangement. Alaska moved her sight away form that brief article, vague confusion flashed on glassy shades of grey.  
“You knew HIM, don’t you?” Rue couldn’t even tell where such credulity came from. “ You knew that German from hell knows where.”  
THAT COUNT. Rue couldn’t even tell, if it was the drumming sound in her chest she heard, or the coarse voice of Alaska.  
“It depends, ” the taller woman raised an eyebrow, “on what exactly do you meant by if I knew him.”  
The drumming sounds reduced, but regrets called up by indiscreet began bumping against her spirit-filled stomach. A half-emptied cigarette case flung open under her nose. It was the only feminine part on Alaska when she got fully dressed: round corners lined with silver; black lacquer cover reflecting a smooth hue; reeds painted with gold; a little bird inlaid with mother-of-pearl. Rue remembered the medium complaining about never getting enough time to roll her own cigarettes, yet she couldn’t raise her hand to pick one.  
“If you are asking whether I have contract with him, then yes. I do have business to do with him occasionally. If what you really want to know is whether I know who he was——  
Smoke escaped Alaska’s nostrils, traced a ladder in the murky air.  
“——sorry, I never got to know him.”  
So did I know him? No, absolutely not. Rue answered herself in silence, though she never expected the question to be asked. How could I, Lohengrin?  
“But you will remember him, won’t you?” The bumping in her stomach grew even stronger, drumming sounds raised again and evolved into thunder. But Rue caught the time, and never gave Alaska——who just rose her glass——the chance to react. “Likewise, will you remember me?”  
Dark-colored beer slid almost visible along Alaska’s pale throat. Rue reached for her own glass, swallowed spirit like lightening slashed thunderclouds apart.  
“Allow me to answer both of your questions.”  
Alaska rolled the emptied pint glass between her boney fingers.  
“No.”  
Lightning and Thunder sank into icy stillness.  
“Why, had anyone like ME make you such promises?” Asked Alaska.  
Rue tasted spiced honey cake on the tip of her stiff tongue.  
“No, and I don’t even know what you are taking about.”  
Alaska shrugged, put the cigarette out, and raised a hand for her second beer of the day. 

·A former reckoner walked into a bar, and found a medium sat there waiting for her.  
It was not because that Alaska seldom came this early. Neither the suit that was too dandified for such a mothy tavern scene. Even not the absinthe that finally showed up in front of this medium——No, it actually was that absinthe.  
That wildering emerald color of long-lost days. Fruits of poison-green. Compound eyes merry with hunger. Sweet color before darkening. Once upon a time, someone did explain all this to her, far beyond the ending of an old life, long after the maddening green fay turned into decent memories.  
Yet what important was; if there really was any importance in it at all; that blank-faced gallery should be closed on this lead-colored winter day.  
The scent of honey got even stronger that it froze Rue’s unspoken words within. A chair was pulled out squeaking. The color of the Wood filled the reservoir on a glass. Absinthe spoon; half covered by rust; held a sweet cube of ivory in the middle. Twig-like fingers wrapped around carafe covered by icy pearls of dew.  
Cold water fell as Rue sank into her seat. Milky louche clouded the drink. The high-held carafe wept tears turning the emerald——taking its colors——into opal, ivory, pale.  
The palest.  
A glass filled with silence; frosting and bitter; was pushed towards Rue. Alaska got up and left without a word. Frozen raindrops kept knocking on the muddy window frames. She didn’t take her coat with her.  
The spoon laid awkwardly across the glass. Rue picked it up with extreme care, as if she didn’t want to disturb the growth of all that squirming rust.  
“So this is farewell, I guess.”

·A former reckoner walked into a bar.  
She considered ordering Porter ale, but perished that thought before she reached the counter.


End file.
